How do you eat an elephant? One bite at time!

I live in a 2400 square foot house.  I live all alone.  Every thing in this house is mine.  I have 2 floor looms and enough fiber to cover this acre of ground.  I have never thrown a magazine away.  House plants thrive every where.  2 couches, 2 recliners, 9 sewing machines and 64,000 yards of fabric.

I have a garage that is big enough to hold a full size commercial gravel hauling truck and trailer.  I have a tin shed that holds a full size car and 7,000 jars as well as a heavy duty rototiller, high wheel weed whacker, lawn mower and 7 weight sets without the bars.  Not to mention enough bug spray and weed killer to annihilate  half of the county.

My problem is this:  I want to sell everything and move into a small, one level apartment in town.  So where do I start?  I thought downstairs would be the place.  No.  All that fabric and machines I use.  The next level up is the weaving room and if I could just sell those 2 looms, but then what would I do with all that fiber?  And I make stationary.  I need that stuff.

Next comes the ebay/sales/spare bedroom/storage area and toy room.  Are you getting the picture?  At one point I decided that the only hope was to just drop dead and let the kids sort it out, but I could almost see the burning pile out back and them throwing me on top so I could enjoy my treasures throughout eternity!  But then this morning I seen a shared post that hit the nail on the head.  It was shared by Margaret Velveteen and it hit home with me.    OK, I tried to copy and paste and that is not working for me, so I will give you the gist of it.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly...because doing it poorly is better than not doing it at all."
"Do things halfway.  Now you are doing 100% better than you were before."

Now what I take from this is that all my setting around procrastinating is getting me now where.  I have been in the "sell this damn place and move into town" mode for a couple years now and absolutely nothing has moved one inch!  So, the Patty daughter has been here for a few days and we have talked about this.  Well, I have damn near talked it to death, so today is the day that I am going to start eating that elephant!  And every day, I am going to take a bite out of it and some day (The good lord willing and the creek don't rise!) I will actually be able to look around and see bare floors and empty walls.

I am going to be just like that little ant that moved the rubber tree plant!  I have high hopes!  High apple pie in the sky hopes!  Whoops!  There goes another rubber tree plant!

Course you know I am as full of shit as a Christmas goose, don't you! And I may have had a sip or 2 from the vanilla bottle!  But I guess the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.  Wish me luck, because I am going to need it.  Come this fall when the leaves start to fall you are going to see that "FOR SALE" sign in front of this house or I will know the reason why.

And does anyone want 8 very old geese?  They are free to a good home!

But can I really know you?

I woke up this morning to the realization that something a friend told me many years ago should be my mantra.  I had once more been disappointed by someone I trusted and I said, "I really thought I knew him better than that."
 
To which he replied, "You never really know anyone.  You just know of them.  You know what they let you see."  And he was right.

I deal with many people, some more closely than others.  We talk and with some of them, we talk for hours.  We share secrets.  We share our inner most thoughts, hopes and dreams.  Do we really?  As I look back over the trail behind me, I am  astounded at how many of my friends have only let me see the outer veneer that covers their tortured soul.

We are placed on this earth by some divine plan to live our lives, hopefully, in peace and harmony.  Some of us have more peace and harmony then others, I have found.  It breaks my heart when I lose a friend to suicide.  Suicide is defined in the dictionary as "the intentional taking of one's own life."  It does not tell us why.  And yet the why is the first question we ask, isn't it?

And we search our memory and we recall the relationship we had with that person.  At least I do.  I remember the last time I saw him.  Right here at my table not very long ago.  He was a computer genius and he worked really cheap for his friends.  He loved cookies and I had his favorite kind.  I will make them again for his memorial service.

We can read all the psychology books and watch for the signs, but we never see them.  Is it because I let my guard down, or because the signs were never there, or did I just not want to see them?  Hind sight is 20/20 looking back, isn't it?

Many years ago when I was a Senior in high school I had a friend in Stenography class whose name I can not recall right now.  He went home one afternoon after school and hung himself in the garage.  Were there signs?  I never saw them and looking back I still don't.

Kenny and I had a friend 30+ years ago.  Kenny was working in Denver and was gone all week, leaving me alone.  He called every night and this friend knew that.  He would show up every night and set at the counter and drink coffee and reading truck books.  When Kenny called, he would talk to him for a few minutes and then he would leave.  It was never a conversation, really, just a "hello how are you?"  One afternoon he went home and put a bullet in his brain.  We never saw it coming.

So as I set here contemplating another memorial service I wonder about the very act of suicide.  No one ever says, "Well, I am just going to put my head in the gas oven and be done with it."  That would make it too simple.  So I shall do what I have always done, put one foot in front of the other and blindly go where I have always gone.  Maybe today I will make a difference to someone looking into that abyss.

Maybe not.

Some times my mind takes a turn.

 I remember when Duane and I lived in Glasco, Kansas.  At the time we only had Debbie and we lived in a large farm house on the outskirts of town.  At the time he was stealing walnut trees on the Solomon River just west of town.  Since he had a wench truck and chain saws it was a rather easy job.  Drop the tree, remove the limbs, wench the trunk and drag it home.  The buyer would come by the house and load it on his trailer.  Then he would hand Duane cold hard cash so it was pretty good money. 

It was winter at the time and the business of trimming trees was pretty slow, so it was pretty much catch as catch can as far as paying rent and buying groceries went.  He had wine fermenting in the root cellar and plenty of tobacco for “roll your own cigarettes.”  We did have a black and white television so we were not without entertainment.  Jeopardy was the game show of the day.  It was not hosted by Alex Trebec and I think the money amounts ranged from $10-50, but it was entertainment nonetheless.

Most of the entertainment consisted of trying to find something edible to eat.  Duane shot a lot of Doves that year.  Course it takes a lot of Doves to make a meal.  Fishing was also good on the Solomon river.  In central Kansas we caught a lot of catfish and Bass, but the Soloman had scary fish.  Pete pulled out a fish that looked like a snake which scared him and he beat it to death with a piece of wood.  We found out later it was a Gar.  Pete also killed a rattlesnake on the back porch late one night.  That scared hell out of me since I had just returned from getting the diapers out of the car.

There was a feed store in town and for 25 cents I could buy an old hen.  I had not cleaned a chicken in my life but I had seen my mother do it so I knew what had to happen.  First I had to put a big bucket of water on to heat.  Duane returned home it the old hen.  Her legs were tied together and I instructed him to chop of her head, which he did.  I dunked her in the scalding water just like I had seen momma and grandma do.  To my amazement the feathers pulled off very easily and very soon there were none left.  I lit a paper like I had seen them do and singed off the hairs that remained.  Then it was time to clean out the inside.

I was not very happy to slice through her abdomen and then reach inside and pull out all her innards, but I did it.  When she was as clean as she needed to be, I put her on to boil and then turned her to simmer.  My 25 cent chicken turned out to be a very good meal.  We bought a package of noodles in town for 15 cents  and ate for 2 days on that one chicken.  Course the coon dogs got the scraps and the bones.  Now the coon dogs and that business was a whole nother story. 

Duane and his brothers would go coon hunting with a man who lived a few miles away.  I never went, but he was quick to tell me how the dogs chased the coon, treed the coon and then ripped it apart when it fell to the ground and they killed it.  Now when he brought home a coon for me to clean and cook, it was a whole new ball game.  No way was I touching that to clean it, or cook it and I sure as hell was not going to eat it.  I would rather eat the barn cat and that was not happening either!

I do not know how long we lived in that farmhouse in Glasco, and I do not know where we went when we left there.  Surely some where better.  Funny how somethings just come into our minds.  Glasco was that way.  I know Duane made wine there.  I know Maudie put gas in the diesel truck.  I know that is where I enrolled in a writing class and Duane bought me my first typewriter.  I know I was pregnant with Patty when we left Glasco.  I know there was a championship boxing match that lasted only a few seconds.  I think it was Cassius Clay and somebody. Or maybe Sonny Liston, or lord only knows.

Sometimes when my memory fails me, it is a good thing.